One of the most lucrative majors on campus has fewer than 35 students in the program.
The mining engineering department offers large cash scholarships, high paying internships and job opportunities to nearly all of its students.
Yet there are only enough students taking advantage of the offers to graduate five or ten a year, Michael McCarter, department chairman, said.
The department “treats students very well and is fun and exciting,” said senior mining engineering major Jessica Wempen. Her classmate, Russel Krall-also a senior in mining engineering-agrees.
“I like mining because you get to blow things up and dig stuff,” he said.
The trend is not limited to Utah. Nationwide, only about 100 students graduate with mining engineering degrees annually, which causes concern about a lack of engineers needed for the growing industry.
A minimum of 300 annual graduates is needed to replace engineers expected to retire by 2015.
But tripling the current number of graduates would still be inadequate because of the steady rate of production, McCarter said.
“We are not taking into consideration the steady growth in mineral consumption,” he said.
A declining number of graduating mining engineers since the peak of 700 in 1980 is becoming “especially obvious and very acute,” he said.
McCarter suggested a reason for the decline: Mining has been largely associated as harmful to the environment and a spreader of pollution.
“The negative attitude toward mining is real,” he said.
But McCarter believes these attitudes are misinformed.
“The public is ignorant on the current laws which govern mining,” he said. “High technology is consistently being used in mining to increase production, find ways to protect the environment and ecosystem-for safety and much more.”
The U’s department even offers classes specializing in restoring the environment and ecosystem for past and current mining, he said.
Another big reason for the decline is that people don’t recognize what the industry does for our society, he said.
“Forty percent of Utah exports are mineral related. Do you realize that when I hit the light switch I am using coal from Utah mines? Most students don’t realize that electricity comes from coal,” he said.
An average computer requires more than 37 minerals and metals. The energy from one pound of coal is required to move two megabytes over the Internet.
“In fact, every person in the U.S. uses over 46,000 pounds of newly mined materials each year,” he said.
To draw more recruits, the department has beefed up its funding opportunities for students.
Most students receive the William C. Browning Scholarship, which awards $2,000 in cash every semester to majoring students who keep a minimum GPA of 3.0.
Starting salaries for jobs in the mining field are between $50,000 and $60,000 per year.
The job placement rate is nearly 100 percent.
“I don’t know of any graduates who haven’t at least received one job offer,” said McCarter.
Krall said he’s already been offered a job for next year with the mining firm Peter Kiewit Sons’, Inc., where he has worked as a paid intern for the past three summers.